The Health Minister’s been reminding us about non-communicable diseases (NCDs) that kill most of us. He should’ve mentioned that insidious “slow poison” known as “cigarette”, that gives us lung cancer. At least we can do something about this NCD!!
Your Eyewitness has long harboured a suspicion that our Indigenous Peoples – “discovered” by Columbus and soon exterminated from the West Indies – had their revenge on Europeans by passing on the use of tobacco to them!! They used tobacco only occasionally, for religious purposes – kinda like Rastas and ganja!
Even though James I of Britain, in his polemic of 1604, titled “A Counterblaste to Tobacco”, denounced the use of tobacco as a “custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomelesse,” nobody listened to him! The man was a prophet!!
After all, there were big bucks to be made from the “blacke stinking fume”!! Soon Africans slaves were hauled over the Atlantic to grow tobacco on PLANTATIONS – to keep up with the demand for the addictive stuff that created its own market!! The colonies that would become the US of A soon became the biggest producers of tobacco – and eventually the largest producers of cigarettes.
Fast forward to the middle of the 20th century and medical research showed Old King James was right!! Some 4000-odd (very odd!!) chemicals produced when tobacco’s burnt have led to lung cancer!! But that US contribution to democracy called “lobbying” soon kicked into gear on behalf of the US tobacco companies, to convince legislators and the public that cigarettes weren’t just “sexy”, but GOOD for them!!
But with the evidence showing that even “second hand” smoke could give folks cancer, the manufacturers had to do something! They couldn’t just give up all these profits, could they? They looked around like Columbus and saw that the natives in what is now the Third World didn’t know better. Why not sell it to THEM? After all they wanted to live just like the Americans and Europeans, didn’t they?
And so said, so done. With the First World exporting cancer sticks, after 50 years, we’re now the biggest smokers on the planet! So, what happened to “The Tobacco Control Bill 2017”, which bans smoking in all indoor workplaces, indoor public places, and public transport?? Is it working?? Is our lung cancer rate decreasing??
Your Eyewitness never smoked after answering the question posed by the philosopher Bertrand Russel:
“Can you imagine a cow inhaling smoke from burning grass? He couldn’t!!
…our potential
One of the bitter truths we Guyanese don’t want to accept is that while we have a heck of a lot of resources – now oil’s coming out of our kazoos!! – we need an even greater heck of a lot of capital to develop them to bring in the wherewithal we need to extract and market them!! So, for the longest while, we ran around boasting that “we got potential”!! Fat lot of good THAT did us!! And now we’re screaming about being “exploited” when those with capital come in to make the play.
Now, let’s get this straight, shall we? When the Yanks and Canuks came in to “develop” our bauxite, what exactly did we get? Some jobs for a while, and lots of holes in the ground. Ditto for gold. So, what are we to make of the claims that Exxon’s “raping” us for our oil?
The bottom line when doing business has always been “caveat emptor” – buyers beware!! But the complainers don’t utter a word about the self-proclaimed “trained negotiator” who sold us out!! Go figure!
